1/2 On Thursday it was #AlexeiNavalny's 50th birthday.

In Helsinki, #Finland a memorial bench was revealed to honor him.

And it was the officials of #Helsinki who suggested that the bench should be placed so, that it can be seen from the Russian Embassy <3!

https://yle.fi/a/74-20230007

#Navalny #Navalnyi #mistreatment #PoliticalPrisoner #assasination #poisoning #murder #memorial #MemorialBench #Russia #Venäjä #opposition #Putin #dictatorship #dictator #criminal #warcriminal

Fun fact: When Croatian dictator Franjo Tudjman died, they had to make his grave slanted so that the cheering crowds wouldn't dance on it.

#Croatia #dictator #fascism #warCriminal

Today in Labor History June 1, 1981: Two Filipino longshore labor organizers, Domingo & Viernes, were assassinated in Seattle, Washington on orders of U.S.-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In 1986, as a result of ongoing protests, President Ronald Reagan told Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly.” That evening, Marcos and his wife Imelda fled to Hawaii aboard a U.S. air force plane, after 20 years of rule, with an entourage of 90 people (mostly servants), with 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry of unknown value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems, $200,000 in gold bullion, $1 million in Philippine pesos and deposit slips for $124 million in banks in the Cayman Islands. Plus, countless crates of shoes. The Marcos hold the Guinness record for the largest ever theft from a government. Today, their son, Bong Bong Marcos, rules over the Philippines, with Sara Duterte as his vice-president, daughter of the brutal previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who has been linked to the death-squad murders of over 1,400 alleged drug dealers and street children.

#laborhistory #WorkingClass #union #seattle #philippines #filipino #deathsquads #assassination #marcos #duterte #organizers #dictator

More #USPol here, though this is about #media. The rot is worse in the #USA than most democratic nations [1], so examples of what I'm about to bitch about flourish there.

The problem is that the media - mainstream media, corporate media, legacy media - has given up calling things what they are, lest they appear "biased". Instead, they engage in "both-sides-ism" where they describe one party's horrific, unethical, illegal position on an issue in the same #neutral terms they describe the "other side"'s reasonable and factual take on it.

Example:

Reasonable side: "The prison camp Alligator Alcatraz has inhumane conditions for inmates and fails to uphold their rights to security, food, facilities, medical treatment, and other things. It violates human rights and must be closed permanently."

The "other side" in this case is a bunch of racist nazi nutjob fascists in favour of throwing all non-white people into concentration camps, and the media say something like "Critics say, however, that the prison is a cost-effective means of detaining those in violation of immigration law prior to deportation".

The media fail when they describe a "side" like this neutrally.

And it is the reason the USA now has a #fascist #dictator.

Today: you don't say "critics say" here - a no-bid contract by #definition did bypass the normal #competitive process. It's a #fact.

[1] Note: not "most other democratic nations".

#BothSides #BothSidesIsm #journalism #stenography #failure #criticism

A power built on fear and violence will, sooner or later, face the very tools it once used to suppress the people. Today's cartoon by Ali Miraee. More cartoons: https://www.cartoonmovement.com/

#dictator #repression #ovethrow

Our Internal Dictator

We all have one.
We all want to run things.

https://tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=25&id=167

#tiereddemocraticgovernance
#dictator

I must buy this:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kP5uLNZB4HU

#American #Dictator

It's 'in your face' now:

"President Donald Trump has called on the country's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Pam Bondi, to more aggressively investigate his political adversaries."

#Dictator #Authoritarian #Democracy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wgg4vgeedo